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"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture."
-- Pope Sixtus III

Wouldn't you be? Barack Obama is at the nadir of his political popularity and effectiveness. He has been maneuvered into an economic corner of 9%-plus unemployment by a relentlessly nihilistic Congress. His achievements—killing bin Laden, saving the auto industry at negligible cost—are written off as flukes. Plus all this 9/11 anniversary stuff! We hear the New York Times is looking into whether it's all starting to get to him—like, clinically.

We're told by a source inside the Times that the paper is preparing a story arguing that Obama no longer finds joy in the political back-and-forth, has seemed increasingly listless to associates, and is generally exhibiting the litany of signs that late-night cable commercials will tell you add up to depression. Or maybe Low T.

Hee-hee. Clinton's may have been hideously deformed, but at least he could get it up.

Either way, the investigation was described to us as taking seriously the notion that Obama may be suffering from a depressive episode. Of course, absent a telltale Wellbutrin prescription or testimony from the man himself, it's really impossible to achieve a reliable diagnosis. And a story like "Obama Appears to Suffer From Depression" can be easily downgraded to "Political Travails Begin to Take Personal Toll on Obama." So the story in question, if it ever comes out, may not end up supporting the depression thesis. But rest assured: There are people at the Times who, based on the paper's reporting, believe Obama is depressed—the kind of depression where, if he weren't the president of the United States, he wouldn't be getting out of bed in the morning.

As per usual, a Times spokeswoman declined to comment: "In keeping with our policy that we don't comment on stories that we may or may not be working on, we will not comment in this case."

From someone who may or may not be Czech via Ollie's Common Sense blog via Shine from Yahoo!:

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."

Glenn Beck mentioned this on the radio this morning and then, as usual, got it about half right. Beck said the problem is people who don't have a "pole star" [Maybe "North Star" would be better, but that's probably the Boy Scout in me talking.] - something fixed to let them know when they stray off the straight and narrow. Then, a couple of minutes later, he's babbling about how all the folks from all the "denominations" must stick together to withstand the coming times of trials.

The part he got right is the lack of a moral compass, or more precisely, the heretical notion that each individual gets to create his own moral compass. Just go back two posts and see that great "fundamentalist Christian" Pat Robertson say it's okay to abandon your wife if she has a certain class of disease.

You can't produce good people if your definition of good shifts every time someone wants it to. We Catholics have been trying to tell you poor bastards this for several hundred years now.

They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.

Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places.

Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!” Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.

Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.

“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”

In a statement issued through a PR representative, Todd Palin trumpeted the Times review, pointing to it as proof that the book was so reprehensible that “even The New York Times” disdained it.

But it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks the Palins have found the Times — the print voice of East Coast intellectualism — in their corner. The Gray Lady also recently published an op-ed praising Palin as a person of ideas and calling for her to be taken seriously.

The column by Anand Giridharadas — impeccably credentialed as an Aspen Institute fellow and Cambridge, Mass., resident — accused the media of “ignoring the ideas [Palin] unfurled” in her recent speech at an Iowa tea party rally. “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism,” he wrote.

It’s a lot of love for Palin from the news outlet she decried back in March in a Facebook post titled “NYT, There You Go Again,” wherein she speculated that the paper’s “false reporting” was the source of its “economic and reputation woes.”

And it’s not the sort of treatment Palin generally perceives from what she loves to call the “lamestream media” — because, as she explained in another Facebook post, “The ‘mainstream’ media isn’t mainstream anymore. That’s why I call it ‘lamestream,’ and the LSM is becoming quite irrelevant, as it is no longer the sole gatekeeper of information.”

“The Rogue” hasn’t yet been widely reviewed — the Times defied the publisher’s embargo to publish its take, and the Los Angeles Times followed suit with a less acerbic take that nonetheless called the book “tame” and said it lacked credibility. But many of its accusations have been aired over the past several days in “Doonesbury,” which received McGinniss’s permission to weave excerpts from the text into the strip’s narrative.

Once again, though, media outlets haven’t played along with the anti-Palin gambit. The Chicago Tribune and other newspapers have declined to publish the “Doonesbury” strips, with the Trib explaining, “The subject matter does not meet our standards of fairness.”

The film premiered last week at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it wasn’t exactly a critical darling.

Variety called it “a sarcastically toned, strategically timed character assassination” that “lacks sufficient humor and insight to make it a must-see for anyone outside the Brit muckraker’s fan base.” Other critics called it “obnoxious” and “unnecessary.”

When reviewers turned their noses up at “The Undefeated,” the pro-Palin film that came out in July, Palin’s fans cried foul and blamed critics’ presumed liberal tendencies. But the critics faulted the anti-Palin movie for the same flaw they noted in “The Undefeated” – clumsy one-sidedness.

Now that the enemy has crossed to their side, Palin’s fans don’t quite seem to know what to do.

The pro-Palin Conservatives4Palin website acknowledged Maslin’s review only in the context of Todd Palin’s statement. It linked to the Giridharadas column without comment.

A C4P commenter on the Giridharadas post wrote, “OMG! Are these city Liberals beginning to see the light?” But other commenters speculated that the Times must have some sinister anti-Palin ulterior motive in publishing it.

Even as Palin become the unlikely darling of the media elites, some in the conservative media have turned against her. Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter recently said she shouldn’t run for president; RedState founder Erick Erickson, in a post titled “Enough,” unloaded on Palin and her most die-hard fans, calling them a “cult” and “kooks.”

To Mark McKinnon, the GOP consultant, former George W. Bush adviser and onetime Sarah Palin debate coach, there’s a simple explanation for the mainstream rejection of the new works of anti-Palinism.

“Sometimes trash is trash,” he said, “and you have to call it for what it is no matter who it comes from or who it’s about.”

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his "700 Club" viewers that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's is justifiable because the disease is "a kind of death."

During the portion of the show where the one-time Republican presidential candidate takes questions from viewers, Robertson was asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.

"I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her," Robertson said.

The chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which airs the "700 Club," said he wouldn't "put a guilt trip" on anyone who divorces a spouse who suffers from the illness, but added, "Get some ethicist besides me to give you the answer."

Most Christian denominations at least discourage divorce, citing Jesus' words in the Gospel of Mark that equate divorce and remarriage with adultery.

Terry Meeuwsen, Robertson's co-host, asked him about couples' marriage vows to take care of each other "for better or for worse" and "in sickness and in health."

"If you respect that vow, you say 'til death do us part,'" Robertson said during the Tuesday broadcast. "This is a kind of death."

A network spokesman said Wednesday that Robertson had no further statement.

Divorce is uncommon among couples where one partner is suffering from Alzheimer's, said Beth Kallmyer, director of constituent services for the Alzheimer's Association, which provides resources to sufferers and their families.

"We don't hear a lot of people saying 'I'm going to get divorced,'" she told The Associated Press. "Families typically respond the way they do to any other fatal disease."

The stress can be significant in marriages though, Kallmyer said, because it results in the gradual loss of a person's mental faculties.

"The caregiving can be really stressful on a couple of levels," she said. "There's the physical level. There's also the emotional level of feeling like you're losing that person you love."

As a result, she said, it's important for couples to make decisions about care together in the early stages of the illness, when its effects aren't as prominent.

Fisker Automotive Inc., a U.S. startup planning to sell luxury plug-in hybrid cars, secured a federal loan for as much as US$528.7-million to fund production of its low-emission models.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Irvine, Calif.-based company will get the conditional financing for development of two lines of plug-in hybrids. The loan is the fourth such announcement under a program intended to spur a market for vehicles that reduce fuel use and greenhouse gases.

“Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could revolutionize personal transportation and cut our dependence on foreign oil, not to mention give us cleaner air and less carbon pollution,” Chu said in a statement. The Fisker project may create as many as 5,000 jobs, the Energy Department said.

The U.S. in June awarded about US$8-billion in low-cost federal loans, part of the so-called Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, to Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. to help fund production of fuel-efficient autos at U.S. factories. Fisker has yet to deliver its US$80,000 Karma model, which is designed to travel 50 miles (80 kilometers) on lithium-ion battery power before its gasoline engine engages.

The government loans to Fisker, exceeding the US$465-million awarded to Tesla, are the largest to a startup carmaker that has yet to begin high-volume electric-vehicle production.

U.S. Factory

Fisker initially will use a US$169.3-million loan from the manufacturing program for engineering work in Michigan and California to get the Karma ready for delivery by next year. In the second stage, a US$359.4-million loan will be used for production of the Nina model, intended to sell for as little as US$39,900 after a federal tax credit, Fisker said on Tuesday.

Fisker’s Karma model is to be assembled under contract in Finland, with about 65% of the car’s parts to be produced in the U.S., said Russell Datz, a company spokesman said. Those include a motor supplied by General Motors Co. and batteries from Ener1 Inc.’s EnerDel factory in Indiana, he said.

“The funds are for engineering and development of key components in the U.S.,” Henrik Fisker, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “We’re not using any of the money from DOE for anything we’re doing in Finland.”

The company plans to buy and retool an existing U.S. factory site to produce the Nina and may announce details of the location by the end of this year, he said.

Fisker has orders for 1,500 Karmas, which will sell for US$87,900 before a federal tax credit, and aims to deliver about 15,000 of the cars annually by 2011, Henrik Fisker said. He wouldn’t say how much his company has raised from private sources.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

President Obama’s re-election campaign launched a Web site on Tuesday called AttackWatch.com that encourages supporters to help dismiss false accusations made about the president’s record and to report what they believe is misinformation about his policies.

In an e-mail sent to Mr. Obama’s supporters on Tuesday, his campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote that AttackWatch.com was resource that would allow “you to nip these attacks in the bud before they show up in the airwaves and in e-mails and then fight back with the truth.”

He said that people who signed up for the Web site would be on the “front lines — you’ll hear about false claims as soon as they come up, and we’ll count on you to spread the truth to your friends and personal networks and let us know about new smears whenever you hear them.”

But the Web site – and Twitter account – became fodder for Republicans on Tuesday night who took to the Twitter platform, using the hashtag #attackwatch with hundreds of posts denouncing the approach. Many of them included a dose of humor.

As part of the launch, content is already on the site seeking to dismiss questions raised by some of the candidates, as well as Glenn Beck, about Mr. Obama’s commitment to Israel. It quotes Mr. Beck as adding to the “growing collection of false allegations about the President’s record on Israel.”

Mr. Beck says: “We’re talking a lot about Israel. The President of the United States, I believe has betrayed our last strong ally.”In response, the Web site rebuts this accusation and urges Mr. Obama’s supporters to “share with their friends.”

Hold on there, kiddies. Beck said "I believe". This is a Stalinist attempt to criminalize opposing opinion. This has nothing to do with the truth.

A number of radical Islamic groups including Muslims Against Crusades (MAC) gathered outside the embassy on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The group of around 100 men shouted "USA terrorists", brandished anti-American placards and chanted through a loudhailer.

Several members of the Muslim groups made anti-American speeches following the flag burning.

One said: "You will always face suffering, you will always face humiliation, unless you withdraw your troops from Muslim lands."

Another declared that America had been "defeated in Iraq and defeated in Afghanistan".

Members of the group publicly burned a poppy on Armistice Day in a similar stunt.

The photo above may have been from that incident, but accompanied this story at the Telegraph.

However, a small opposing group of Muslims - some of whom had travelled hundreds of miles to rebut the extremists - staged a counter-demonstration nearby, holding up placards reading "Muslims Against Extremism" and "If You Want Sharia, Move To Saudi".

Abdul Sallam, 41, who was waving a sign that read "Keep The Silence", travelled down to London from his home in Glasgow to show the strength of his feelings.

He said: "I'm a Muslim. What they're doing is bringing shame on all Muslims. This is not part of the teachings of Islam.

"Islam teaches you that when you see anything bad or evil, you should speak out against it.

"If the moderate Muslims all came out and spoke out, that would defeat them.

"I am proud to be British. I love my country. All these people are doing is breaking Britain apart."

One of the Grosvenor Square memorial service attendees, who did not want to be named, said the protesters should be stopped from standing just across the road from the embassy and using a loud megaphone.

The man, whose cousin died in the terror attacks, said: "They shouldn't be allowed to do it. It's very disrespectful. It's too loud."

HA-HA! That's just satire, kiddies. [Plus he's WAY too old for the goat-raping crowd. They like little boys.] Good little fascists like Pauley The K just love satire.It's an expression of our beloved 1st Amendment rights.

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Sept. 11, 2011: A Day to Commit to Activism

A Message from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

All of us will remember the horror and anguish we experienced 10 years ago. Whether we lost loved ones ourselves—family members, union brothers and sisters—or felt the shock of a society that lost nearly 3,000 people and was forever changed, we need no reminding.

Instead, I would like to reflect on doors that were opened on Sept. 11, 2001, and what has come of them in the 10 years since.

Working men and women rushed through doors to danger and became America’s everyday heroes. Firefighters, construction workers, nurses and EMTs—all kinds of professionals and volunteers—were there not just on the fateful day but some for weeks and months and even years after. And we swore we would never forget.

Doors opened within us to each other. We came together. We flew the flag. We comforted one another. In our grief, we found the best in ourselves.

What an overwhelming sense of unity we shared, all across our nation. And it was this unity that allowed us to begin healing and rebuilding. There is no time in my memory of a more proud example of what we can accomplish when we work together. Solidarity, the cornerstone of the union movement, flowed through all of us and carried us through.

But other doors opened, too—doors to hate, suspicion of “others” and self-centered greed. Our fear was twisted into something much more dangerous.

The unity that had helped us survive faded as divisiveness took root. I look around today in amazement at just how far apart our nation has become—the endless possibilities that came with our unity have all but vanished.

Just 10 years after 9/11, despite our vows, the public servants, construction workers and others who lost their lives or still suffer with the cancerous remnants of the Twin Towers haven’t just been forgotten. They’ve been vilified. The extremist small government posse has turned them into public enemy No. 1, as though teachers and firefighters, EMTs and nurses and union construction workers ruined America’s economy.

In state after state this year—with the heroism of 9/11 less than a decade behind us—politicians targeted the paychecks, benefits and basic rights of these workers in a rabid campaign to shift government support to tax breaks for the wealthy and already profitable corporations.

Wealthy CEOs, anti-government extremist front groups and frothing talk show hosts—from the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks to the Koch brothers, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council—also pushed open the door to hate.

Make no mistake—setting workers against workers is a highly profitable endeavor. How many times during the vilest state attacks on public workers did we hear the question: “Other people don’t have pensions. Why should he?” Prompting that question required twisting the American psyche—which, by its founding nature, seeks to lift the common good. The appropriate question should have been, “Why doesn’t everybody have a pension?” followed by collective action for retirement security.

We’ve seen the costs of hatred in ill-thought wars, in shameful attacks on immigrants and our LGBT neighbors. We saw it in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. We saw it in the racism that has found overt and covert expression since Barack Obama began his run for office—from outright declarations of people who said out loud they would never vote for a black man to the ridiculously persistent obsession with our president’s birth certificate. Regardless of his policies or priorities, President Obama is shadowed by the drumbeat of suspicion based on his “other”-ness. And those suspicions are fed and watered constantly by forces that were threatened by his message of “hope and change.”

We’ve seen the cost of greed in the recklessness of financial institutions that created the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression and the devastating jobs crisis that persists today.

But I remember that other door that opened on 9/11—the door to our better selves, to our understanding that we are one and our values require us to care for one another.

That’s what sent 347 firefighters to their death at the Twin Towers 10 years ago. It’s also what sent firefighters to stand with teachers in Wisconsin even though Gov. Scott Walker had exempted them from his attack on public employees. It’s what moves employed people now to demand good jobs for the 26 million Americans who are looking for work. It’s what gives us the courage to take on a crumbling economy and the politicians preaching austerity and ignoring our jobs crisis—to take them on and say, “We are America. We are better than this. And we are one.”

Brothers and sisters, friends, I hope you will join me in marking this solemn anniversary by committing to redouble your activism on behalf of America’s everyday working heroes. We will rise or fall together.

The latest version of the famous toy oven first marketed in 1963 with a carrying handle and a fake stove top is now all curves and purple and snazzy graphics. And — perhaps most shocking of all — it comes with a new instruction: No light bulb necessary.

Chalk it up as an unintended consequence of the federal government's move to phase out the incandescent light bulb. The compact fluorescents that are becoming the new standard for household use are so energy efficient that they're useless in baking a brownie — or any of the other miniature treats the Easy-Bake has been cooking up for nearly 50 years.

Initially, news of the death of the 100-watt bulb prompted rumors that the Easy-Bake might be going the same way. Instead, the toy got its 11th redesign, at the heart of which is a new heating element much like that of a traditional oven.

The forced re-engineering also handed Hasbro an excuse to give the Easy-Bake — which in the 1960s and 1970s came in the era's popular kitchen décor colors — its most modern makeover yet.

"This gave us a reason to do it completely differently," said Michelle Paolino, a vice president of global brand strategy and marketing at Hasbro.

"We wanted it to look more like a real appliance, not a plastic toy," she said.

About the size of a big bread box, the Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven is clearly designed to fit on any kitchen counter, assuming a parent is willing to shell out $49.99, a steep hike from the last model's price tag of $29.99.

"It looks sort of like an Art Deco toaster with wings — a purple one," said Patricia Hogan, curator at The Strong, which includes the National Museum of Play and the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, N.Y. "It's just so cool."

The oven targets girls between 8 and 12. The beauty of the oven, the company and users say, is that children can mix and bake mostly themselves — the food gets pushed in one end of the oven, cooks, then comes out the other side. Still, Hasbro says parental supervision is required.

The company says the cooking chamber temperature of the new model can reach approximately 375 degrees; the outside of the oven remains only warm to the touch.

Hasbro says the product, voluntarily recalled in 2007 because of reports of burns, meets all safety regulations. Nearly a million ovens were recalled after reports of children getting their fingers or hands stuck in its opening and suffering sometimes serious burns; a 5-year-old girl was injured so badly she had to have part of her finger amputated.

Inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame in 2006, the Easy-Bake Oven has become something of an icon, spawning at least one "gourmet" cookbook that includes recipes from Food Network chef Bobby Flay. Some families, to be frugal, would use regular, less expensive cake mixes than the Easy-Bake ones, or create their own.

Jenn Romig, 31, of Denver, got an Easy-Bake for Christmas in the 1980s and loved it. Her favorite was the heart-shaped pan, which she used to make little cakes that she served to her two brothers.

"I think they wanted to" use the oven themselves, she said, "but it seemed girly. So they just would eat whatever I made."

She didn't know at first what was behind the oven's magic — until one day the bulb needed changing.

"It was kind of sad for me," she said.

Joe Cacciola, president of Fuzion Design Inc., the Pawtucket-based firm that worked with Hasbro on the Easy-Bake's redesign over the last two years, says having to eliminate the light bulb has been something of a blessing.

He says the new heating element allows for more consistent heat — no hotspots near the bulb — and an overall better bake. There's also no need for parents to open the insides to screw in a bulb.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the redesign has also brought an up-sizing of portions. Cacciola says the heating chamber is about 50 percent larger, and the new rectangular cooking pan, a departure from the traditional round one, can hold more and bigger snacks.

Cacciola knows a thing or two about the Easy-Bake, having worked for Hasbro himself, including on that toy line. (He also helped launch the Queasy Bake Cookerator, an ill-fated attempt to get boys in on the fun by allowing them to bake grossly named edibles like Chocolate Crud Cake and Dip 'N Drool Dog Bones.) He says the approach designers took on the new Ultimate Oven was a blend of evolution with revolution.

The first Easy-Bake, manufactured by Kenner, now a division of Hasbro, came on the market in 1963. It was turquoise, boxy and cost $15.95; parents bought 500,000 in the first year alone. The oven has always reflected the times, at least in part: In 1965, Hasbro introduced TV-dinner-like trays that were split into three sections. The kid-cooked mini-meal consisted of beef and macaroni, peas and carrots.

By the 1980s, the oven was white and had a high-low setting switch. By 1993, it had gone pink.

In 2003, Hasbro introduced a version of the oven without a light bulb, called the Real Meal Oven, which looked less like an oven and more like a microwave. But it opted to go back to the light bulb with the next redesign.

Along with the latest model comes a new line of Easy-Bake mixes; Paolino says they're trendier snacks. There's a pink-and-brown "checkerboard" cake, for instance, along with whoopie pies, party pretzel "dippers" and cinnamon twists.

The cook time is about the same with the new heating element, about 15 minutes on average.

"It's just like a real oven," says Paolino, before reflecting on the Easy-Bake the way it once was: "It's pretty amazing what a 100-watt light bulb can do."

Between 2009 and 2010, the median income of U.S. households fell 2.3 percent to $49,445 — the lowest level since 1996, after adjusting for inflation, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

Golly, what party controlled Congress and the Presidency then?

More alarming, perhaps, is the overall poverty rate. The annual report also said the number of families living in poverty rose by 2.6 million, to 46.2 million — the largest increase since the Census Bureau began keeping track 52 years ago.

From his vantage point, the economy has only gotten worse this year, said Joe Winter of West Long Branch.

“It’s bad, real bad,” said Winter, who owns the Collingwood Sub Shop at the Collingwood Auction and Flea Market in Farmingdale. Winter also works the Dogs Gone Wild hot dog stand on Route 66 in Neptune to help out a friend, and most of the people who come to the stand discuss the economy, he said.

“I’m just hearing they can’t pay their bills, there’s no jobs — it’s the same story,” he said...

The US poverty rate rose in 2010 to 15.1 percent, the highest since 1993, according to census data showing a record number of Americans classified as poor and highlighting a struggling economy after the end of the Great Recession.

The Census Bureau report released Tuesday showed a sharp increase in the poverty rate from 14.3 percent in 2009, and a fourth consecutive rise in the number of people below the poverty line, to 46.2 million.

The number of people living in poverty was the highest since data collection began in 1959, although the rate was 7.3 percentage points lower than in 1959.

The US definition of poverty is an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for a single person in 2010.

The survey showed struggles for the rest of Americans, with median annual household income falling 2.3 percent to $49,445.

The Census Bureau also said the number of people without health insurance coverage rose to 49.9 million in 2010 from 49.0 million in 2009, while the percentage without coverage -- 16.3 percent -- was not statistically different from the rate in 2009.

The census report said there was no "statistically significant" change in inequality between 2009 and 2010 based on its index.

The poverty rate for blacks and Hispanics was much higher than for the overall population at 27.4 percent and 26.6 percent, respectively. Among regions, the South had the highest poverty rate at 16.9 percent and the highest percentage without health insurance, 19.1 percent.

The Asian population saw a decline in poverty to 12.1 percent from 12.5 percent a year earlier.

The poverty rate increased for children under 18 to 22 percent from 20.7 percent in 2009.

The Children's Leadership Council, an advocacy group, called the news "unacceptable in America."

"We are paying the price for child poverty today, and we will pay the price for decades to come," said the organization, calling for lawmakers to avoid further cuts to child welfare.

"The rising numbers of children living in poverty is a direct result of the choices made by political leaders who put billionaires before kids," the group said. "America's children should be our top priority."

The report, showing the first full year since the recession officially ended in June 2009, supports the notion that Americans have been losing ground economically. It showed real median incomes fell 6.4 percent from pre-recession levels in 2007 and were 7.1 percent below the peak in 1999.

Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the report shows "the news on economic well-being in the US is not good," and that the trend is likely to continue.

"Given the widely accepted projections that both unemployment and in particular long-term unemployment will continue at high rates for the next several years, we can expect this pattern of continuing low income and high poverty rates for many years," Haskins said.

"Safety net programs run by the federal and state governments are helping millions of families avoid poverty, but these programs could be subject to cuts at the federal and state level because of continuing deficit and debt problems," he said.

"The main message of today's release in income and poverty numbers from the Census Bureau is that if we don't like the way things are now, we better get used to it."

A Brookings analysis shows that the poverty rate is projected to approach 16 percent in 2014, "meaning that the Great Recession will have added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor by mid-decade."

The Obama administration's eagerness to deliver economic stimulus may have influenced a federal review of a loan to a now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, a move that may have left taxpayers on the hook for a $528 million debt, House Republicans said Wednesday.

A Chinese man thought he would look years younger after bathing with live eels in a spa treatment designed to remove dead skin, writes the . Instead, one of the eels meant to eat the man's dead skin cells decided to enter his penis through the urethra.

OMG.

According to , Zhang Nan, 56, tried to grab the six-inch eel before it could swim all the way up inside him, but the eel was too slippery for him.

"I tried to hold it and take it out, but the eel was too slippery to be held and it disappeared up my penis," he said.

Rushing himself to hospital, the man underwent a three-hour operation to remove the six-inch eel which was dead by the time doctors found it.

HOWARD BEACH, N.Y.—The Democratic Party’s rare loss of a congressional seat in its urban heartland Tuesday, accompanied by a blowout defeat in a Nevada special election, marked the latest in a string of demoralizing setbacks that threatened to deepen the party’s crisis of confidence and raise concerns about President Barack Obama’s political fortunes.

In New York, Republican Bob Turner soundly defeated Democrat David Weprin in a House contest that — in the view of party leaders, at least — featured an anemic urban machine, distracted labor unions and disloyal voters. In Nevada, a consequential state for the president’s reelection strategy, Democrats suffered a runaway loss rooted in a weak showing in Reno’s Washoe County, a key bellwether.

Even before the polls closed, the recriminations — something short of panic, and considerably more than mere grumbling — had begun. On a high-level campaign conference call Tuesday afternoon, Democratic donors and strategists commiserated over their disappointment in Obama. A source on the call described the mood as “awful.”

Less expansive but equally telling were the remarks of House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, who in a conversation with reporters Tuesday morning said bluntly that Obama would take some blame for the two special election losses.

“I think every election reflects on the person in charge, but do I think it is an overall statement on the president alone? No,” said Hoyer. “Do I think it will be interpreted as being a statement on Obama? That’s probably correct.”

A senior Hill Democratic aide was more direct in attempting to explain the New York loss: “The approval ratings for the guy at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue cratered.”

A Turner consultant, Steve Goldberg, validated that assessment: “It was all Obama — not even a thought of anything else.”

The president’s feisty new jobs plan has probably preempted open revolt in his party — though a Bloomberg poll released Wednesday morning found that 51 percent of Americans don’t believe it will help lower the unemployment rate. Senior party figures are on board with — or are at least resigned to — the White House’s leadership. And some Democratic insiders sought to put a better face on their diminished state — before adding that they wanted to see a tougher Obama.

Wow. This had to be written by some ancient hippie queen who thinks it's 1968 and that yummy Sidney Poitier is living in the White (Racist.) House.

“Let’s face it — it has been a tough summer for Democrats,” said Jack Quinn, a top lobbyist and former White House Counsel to President Clinton. “But I really do think that people are feeling better.”

Quinn said, however, that Obama must confront the GOP.

“They didn’t get the House and say, ‘We want half a loaf.’ They’ve said, ‘we want the whole g——— oven,’” he argued. “It’s time for the president to really draw some hard lines here.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), among the most senior House Democrats, sketched out those lines.

“The Republicans want us to repeal the 20th century, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, to turn us back to the robber barons running the country, and to eviscerate the environmental and other regulations to protect public health and safety,” said Waxman. “And to cut spending in ways that would be very harmful to people who rely on government.”

Hee-hee. Obviously, Henry is no longer on the cutting edge of Jewish thought.

Others welcomed the notion of a new Obama — even if message doesn’t seem to have yet made its way north to New York or west to Nevada.

Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and suburban New York, said the “feisty Barack Obama, the one that we knew and loved and voted for in 2008, reappeared last week.”

“I think and I hope that that’s going to be the Obama were going to see from now to election time,” Engel said Tuesday, before dashing up to New York to help turn out Democratic voters for Weprin.

But the party’s structural weaknesses were on full display in the stunning New York defeat — the party’s first loss of a Brooklyn or Queens congressional seat in a generation. The Queens Democratic Party’s decision to nominate Weprin, an Orthodox Jewish member of the state Assembly who lives in another district, was driven by “the most blatant ethnic politics,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University. It was an old-school play that failed: Turner fought hard for Jewish votes over the issues of Israel and same-sex marriage, and Orthodox leaders were well-represented at his victory party at an Italian restaurant in Howard Beach.

Much of New York’s still-powerful labor movement, meanwhile, sat the race out — distracted, demoralized, and with other fish to fry. The labor-backed Working Families Party, a juggernaut in other city races, chose to put its resources Tuesday into a bitter internecine battle with the Brooklyn Democratic organization — leaving Weprin to rely on the rusting party machine.

It was a nightmare scenario for Democrats that threatens to repeat itself on the national level, as major unions turn away from their traditional level of engagement. AFL-CIO leaders have talked about focusing their spending on state-level races. The giant SEIU has discussed replacing what had been an all-out campaign for Obama in 2008 with a campaign more focused on the issue of jobs.

And labor union leaders in Washington watched with frustration as a heavily Democratic, pro-union, blue-collar district slipped away.

“Obama needs to reconnect with labor, get in the trenches with us again,” said a veteran labor official. “There is, among my members, a sense of disconnect with him. He needs to signal to us that he is a labor champion, not just supported by labor.”

And so as they eye Obama’s reelection a year away, many Democratic leaders are taking an unexpectedly passive line. They’re pinning their hopes on the chance that the Republican Party nominates a figure who will, essentially, defeat him or herself.

Asked who he’d like to see the Republicans nominate, Montana Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer suggested: “Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry — those would all be good ones to run against.”

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This is a fine example of a time-honored dumbass movie genre - attempted film noir. It has all the necessary ingredients: A hard-boiled P.I. [Antonio Banderas, who also stars in another decent dumbass flick, Desperado, with the yummy Salma Hayek.] who is much too smart for his own good, a femme fatale, an insane rich guy, sexual perversion, dark secrets, Los Angeles, and crooked cops.

Sadly, it's rated R for the usual ignorant use of words you wouldn't use around your mom, not quite cartoonish bloodletting, and nudity from the cute-as-a-next-door-button Autumn Reeser[from tv's No Ordinary Family].

Dumbass Cameo: Snoop Dogg as a porn director/actor.

All-Time Dumbass Line: After an albino midget is set on fire and launched out of a Hollyweird mansion's window, Banderas says: "He's a white dwarf gone supernova."

Monday, September 12, 2011

The new conventional wisdom on 9/11: We have created a decade of fear. We overreacted to 9/11 — al-Qaeda turned out to be a paper tiger; there never was a second attack — thereby bankrupting the country, destroying our morale and sending us into national decline.

The secretary of defense says that al-Qaeda is on the verge of strategic defeat. True. But why? Al-Qaeda did not spontaneously combust. Yet, in a decade Osama bin Laden went from the emir of radical Islam, jihadi hero after whom babies were named all over the Muslim world — to pathetic old recluse, almost incommunicado, watching shades of himself on a cheap TV in a bare room.

What turned the strong horse into the weak horse? Precisely the massive and unrelenting American war on terror, a systematic worldwide campaign carried out with increasing sophistication, efficiency and lethality — now so cheaply denigrated as an “overreaction.”

First came the Afghan campaign, once so universally supported that Democrats for years complained that President Bush was not investing enough blood and treasure there. Now, it is reduced to a talking point as one of “the two wars” that bankrupted us. Yet Afghanistan was utterly indispensable in defeating the jihadis then and now. We think of Pakistan as the terrorist sanctuary. We fail to see that Afghanistan is our sanctuary, the base from which we have freedom of action to strike Jihad Central in Pakistan and the border regions.

Iraq, too, was decisive, though not in the way we intended. We no more chose it to be the central campaign in the crushing of al-Qaeda than Eisenhower chose the Battle of the Bulge as the locus for the final destruction of the German war machine.

Al-Qaeda, uninvited, came out to fight us in Iraq, and it was not just defeated but humiliated. The local population — Arab, Muslim, Sunni, under the supposed heel of the invader — joined the infidel and rose up against the jihadi in its midst. It was a singular defeat from which al-Qaeda never recovered.

True, in both wars there was much trial, error and tragic loss. In Afghanistan, too much emphasis on nation-building. In Iraq, the bloody middle years before we found our general and our strategy. But cannot the same be said of, for example, the Civil War, the terrible years before Lincoln found his general? Or the Pacific campaign of World War II, with its myriad miscalculations, its often questionable island-hopping, that cost infinitely more American lives?

In the end: 10 years, no second attack (which everyone assumed would come within months). That testifies to the other great achievement of the decade: the defensive anti-terror apparatus hastily constructed from scratch after 9/11 by President Bush, and then continued by President Obama. Continued why? Because it worked. It kept us safe — the warrantless wiretaps, the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, preventive detention and, yes, Guantanamo.

Perhaps, says the new conventional wisdom, but these exertions have bankrupted the country and led to our current mood of despair and decline.

Rubbish. The total cost of “the two wars” is $1.3 trillion. That’s less than 1/11th of the national debt, less than one year of Obama deficit spending. During the golden Eisenhower 1950s of robust economic growth averaging 5 percent annually, defense spending was 11 percent of GDP and 60 percent of the federal budget. Today, defense spending is 5 percent of GDP and 20 percent of the budget. So much for imperial overstretch.

Yes, we are approaching bankruptcy. But this has as much to do with the war on terror as do sunspots. Looming insolvency comes not from our shrinking defense budget but from the explosion of entitlements. They devour nearly half the federal budget.

As for the Great Recession and financial collapse, you can attribute it to misguided federal policy pushing homeownership through risky subprime lending. To Fannie and Freddie. To greedy bankers, unscrupulous lenders, naive (and greedy) home buyers. To computer-enabled derivatives so complicated and interwoven as to elude control. But to the war on terror? Nonsense.

9/11 was our Pearl Harbor. This time, however, the enemy had no home address. No Tokyo. Which is why today’s war could not be wrapped up in a mere four years. It was unconventional war by an unconventional enemy embedded within a worldwide religious community. Yet in a decade, we largely disarmed and defeated it, and developed the means to continue to pursue its remnants at rapidly decreasing cost. That is a historic achievement.

Our current difficulties and gloom are almost entirely economic in origin, the bitter fruit of misguided fiscal, regulatory and monetary policies that had nothing to do with 9/11. America’s current demoralization is not a result of the war on terror. On the contrary. The denigration of the war on terror is the result of our current demoralization, of retroactively reading today’s malaise into the real — and successful — history of our 9/11 response.

About Me

First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct.
"My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up.
What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.